See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand! O, that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Romeo and Juliet (Act 2, Scene 2)
KATE
He pulls up in his cousin’s black jeep. Before he reaches the door, I come out of the house wearing my oldest jeans and a long-sleeved thermal shirt with sweatshirt.
“Good, you listened. I was worried you’d be wearing Gucci or something.”
“You told me to wear clothes that could be ruined. And I trusted you.”
That smile of his, it makes its usual impact. I see his tongue for a moment, which makes me actually stumble on the stairs.
“Are your parents home?” he asks, and I’m sure he’s still wondering about last night. I’m furious at Dad, but he wouldn’t talk last night and this morning he was gone early. Mom had little to say. All I know is if I acted like that to anyone, especially one of his guests in our house, he would’ve grounded me for a month.
“Just Mom.”
“Should I say hello?”
“Oh, before you take her daughter out for the day? That sounds a little old-fashioned.”
“My mother practically beat gentlemanly etiquette into me.” I pause a moment, wondering if it’s hard for him to mention his mother. “She was on her treadmill and then getting ready for a luncheon, but she would have liked your etiquette.”
Caleb takes my bag from my shoulder. The idea that my clothes might be ruined makes me a little nervous about today’s experiment.
“Where are we going?” I’m grateful to see high clouds that don’t appear to threaten much rain today. The jeep has a top on, but the doors are still missing and the sides are covered with mud.
“No questions. Only trust.”
“Did you clean the jeep just for me?” I ask.
“I did some early morning scouting.”
“Great. This sounds ominous.”
I pull myself up to get into the seat then reach around for the seat belt.
“We could always take my car.”
“Yeah, I’m sure the Lexus would do great off-road.”
So he knows what my car looks like. When I’ve seen him in the parking lot at school, he never acts like he’s seen me.
“We’re going off-road?”
He gives a shake of his head and I sigh.
“Okay, okay.”
The jeep rumbles to life. Caleb turns on some grunge music and drives for the highway. As he accelerates onto the main road, the wind is too loud for us to hear one another.
I am happy, I realize. It fills me up and overflows, this happiness.
The morning air is crisp on my face, the heater warms my feet, the music vibrates through my back.
A sense of utter freedom fills me, as my hair flies around and we come over a rise and see the ocean ahead. I have a sudden urge to unbuckle my seat belt, hang out the door, and scream with joy. I start laughing at the image of this, and Caleb does a double take, the wind in our faces, shaking his head and laughing with me.
“It feels so good!” I yell and start moving to the music.
“It does!” he yells back, the widest smile I’ve ever seen across his face.
The music rises, pounding my back. I love the song. I turn up the volume and sing out loud. He drives with his hands tight on the wheel, taking looks at me with that same smile and moving his head. He bangs the steering wheel with his hands as the song rises to a crescendo.
“Let’s just drive forever,” I shout.
He’s laughing at most everything I say now.
“I was bored!” I yell as life pulses through my veins and into every cell of my body. It’s crazy how these moments of joy fill me at times, rare times for sure. Less and less it seems. But now, right here and now, the joy is immense.
The jeep slows behind an RV.
“I told you.” He reaches a hand almost unconsciously and touches my chin, then brushes away a strand of hair that caught against the edge of my mouth.
I freeze, staring at him, but his eyes return quickly to the road, gripping the steering wheel again. He wanted to kiss me. “I’m going to drive for the moment.” He chews his bottom lip, that perfect bottom lip of his.
I think I’m drunk on happiness.
The music changes to a rock ballad, and I close my eyes a moment, taking it all in. There is a comforting strength about him beside me, his arms on the steering wheel, eyes on the road. He slides on his sunglasses. He makes a quick glance at me and catches me studying him.
“Are you cold?” he asks, turning down the music slightly.
“I’m okay.”
“You look cold. I have that jacket . . .” He reaches back and hands me the same worn leather jacket I used on the Sunday we went to church together. I hope it’s his and not his cousin’s; the smell of cologne and softness of the leather remind me of him. I think someday I’ll steal this coat from him.
We drive along Highway 101 going south along the beaches and rocky Oregon coastline.
“Are you kidnapping me? Is that the trust experiment?”
“Maybe. How far from home would it take for you to get worried?”
I don’t answer for a moment, thinking that I could ride like this all over the United States. “Alaska maybe, though we’d have to turn north for that. I didn’t bring my passport so we can’t go to Canada. Maybe California instead?”
The fog gets heavy over the sky and out to sea. The beaches and inlet are clothed with gray, feathery fingers.
Finally he pulls off the highway at a gravel turnout. Half hidden along the side I see an opening in the trees. He drives down a faint path that might have been a road a long time ago. He jumps out and walks to each of the front tires, bending down and adjusting something on them before hopping back in.
“Had to turn the hubs for four-wheel drive to work. The old jeeps are all manual like that.”
“Cool,” I say, biting my lip. Was it my imagination that he wanted to kiss me? We drive down the steep path. My Lexus would’ve never survived the bumps and deep channels where it looks like someone drove during the rain. Caleb drives on the edge of the road to avoid driving inside of the ruts.
He stops in a small green meadow, turning off the engine. “Here we are.”
“Are we?”
“Not really. But are you hungry?”
“A little.”
“Great, I’m starving.” He lifts an ice chest from the back and a Stanley thermos. “I grabbed snacks at Trader Joe’s.”
“Perfect. You should have told me, I could’ve brought some food.”
Hot chocolate steams from the thermos as he opens the top. Crackers, cheese, olives, two kinds of chips, salami, hum-mus— it’s a mini-feast.
“There’s some water in the ice chest.”
He sets out two camping chairs with the food spread out on a tiny folding table.
“This is amazing,” I say, eating an olive.
He shrugs but looks pleased that I like everything.
“Our experiment begins with a question. How much do you trust me?”
He digs into the back of the jeep and pulls out a pad of paper and pen. Then he waits for my response.
“Like on a scale of one to ten?”
“Sure.”
“I don’t really know you, but then I did see you save Katherine’s life . . . so maybe a six?”
“A six? Okay.” He brings his lips together and nods as he writes that down.
“Was that wrong? How much do you trust me?”
“There’s no wrong. And this experiment isn’t about my trust of you, only yours of me.”
“Maybe I’ll take a turn, so that I can ask.”
“You do that.” He smiles.
After we eat and put the food away, Caleb packs his notepad and two water bottles into his backpack. He slings a rope over his shoulder opposite the one with his backpack.
“Rope—ominous,” I say, following after him.
“Did your trust level decrease?” He stops and uses a fake scientific-sounding voice.
“I’ll tell you if it does.”
CALEB
After fifteen minutes of walking, we reach the rocky edge above the sea that churns wild and dark after last night’s rain. I tie off the rope to a sturdy tree a few yards beyond the rocks. I hand Kate some small gloves and slide on mine while she does more of the lip-biting now with a nervous raise of her eyebrows.
I’m a mess of feelings, like nothing that I’ve experienced, ever.
This time with Kate, out here alone, it’s like perfection.
But it’s distracting, too, and I’ve had more than my share of un-innocent thoughts since we stopped in the meadow. She has no idea how every little thing can make me think thoughts I shouldn’t. The way she ate an olive, how she joked about needing to unbutton her pants after we ate, how good her tight-fitting shirt looks . . . I want to put my hands around the curve of her waist, and her “old jeans” could only mess with my head more if they weren’t on her at all—which ran through my head as well. It’s supposed to be a normal guy thing to have such struggles, but I would’ve appreciated it if God had made it a little easier. Being noble is a real pain—literally. And I don’t think it’d take much to do whatever I want with her. Why can’t she be a prude—or find me unattractive? Kate, help me out here!
Right now, I need to be focused on the next ten minutes of climbing. I could’ve killed us in the jeep. She mesmerizes me at times, I truly can’t get my eyes away from her. Her singing with the music, hair dancing around her sweet small face—I could’ve gone right off the road.
“Have you been in love before?” she asks me suddenly.
I stare at her. Are we really having this conversation right now? Why now?
“Can I sit down?” I say, and she looks incredibly worried as she sits against a rock. It’s hard to keep from smiling. We’re close to each other, knees nearly touching.
“So what was your question again?” I enjoy toying with her just a little. It eases some of my own inner turmoil.
“Knock it off. You heard me. We’re sort of like friends now, so can’t I ask?”
“Sure. Have I ever been in love?” I see her leaning forward just a little as if anxious to hear the answer. “Have you?”
She leans back and sighs. “I asked first.”
“Okay, then: no, I haven’t.”
“Really? I would have thought . . . I don’t know.” The relief in her face intrigues me.
“There have been others . . . girls I dated, I mean.”
“Others? As in, other than me?”
She catches that, and neither of us speaks a moment.
“The thing is, I won’t settle for anything but the real thing.” I stare out at the sea and wonder if she’ll find what I’m about to say ridiculous. But here I go, about to lay it all out there.
KATE
He won’t settle for anything but the real thing?
It’s as if he has an answer to a question I had stopped asking.
“How do you know if it’s real? How do you know it exists?”
He considers his thoughts a moment. “Well, there was a girl in Hawaii.”
My heart takes a hit with that line, and I want to take back my question. His face seems to question whether he can trust me with this, and though I want to know everything about him and have him be able to tell me anything, there is a surprising amount of pain at the three words girl in Hawaii.
“Your girlfriend?” I ask with a tone of detached interest, which is a feat deserving an Oscar.
He nods, staring far across the horizon.
“What happened?” I ask in my best compassionate tone, but the truth is, I may not breathe until he answers the real questions I’m thinking, Is it over between you? Did you have sex with her? Were you in love with her? Was she in love with you?
“She was everything I’m supposed to love.”
“What do you mean by that?” I say, too quickly.
“There are things . . . expectations, you might say.”
“Your expectations?” This wasn’t making sense to me.
“No. Expectations about me. At least there were before I left.”
“Tell me.”
He spews a short, sarcastic laugh and then looks at me. “For one, she was Hawaiian. This is very important to my family back home. They aren’t very fond of hales—white people.”
“Are you serious?”
He digs into the ground with his foot. “Unfortunately, yes. Everyone said she was right for me. But my parents put this image in me, a romantic streak, that makes me believe in finding a great love.”
“A great love,” I repeat as if hypnotized, which isn’t all that far off.
“Throughout history there are countless stories of great loves. I don’t think that’s ended, even if it’s modern time. I saw in with my parents. It’s what I want for my life.”
How amazing to believe in something like that now? No one had great love, I thought.
“You mean like Romeo and Juliet?”
“Yes. But there are many more. Like Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl. There are different versions of the story, but it’s about a Mexican warrior named Popoca who fell in love with the Princess Izta. The chief told Popoca that if he brought back the head of an enemy chief, he could marry the princess.
“While he was gone fighting in the war, another warrior who hated Popoca sent back a message that Popoca had died in battle. Izta was inconsolable and within a few days, she died of sadness.”
Caleb looks out beyond the massive rocks that are shrouded in fog, then his eyes return to me.
“During her funeral, Popoca arrived with the head of the enemy chief, not knowing what had happened. When he found out, he took Izta’s body and walked until he met some mountains. There he ordered his men to build a funeral table covered in flowers. Then he set Izta there, and as he kneeled down to watch over her, he died of sadness as well.
“That’s awful. It is a lot like Romeo and Juliet.”
“In Mexico today, there are two volcanoes said to be Itza and Popoca. One is called La Mujer Dormida—the Sleeping Woman— because it looks like a woman sleeping on her back. The legend says Popoca became the Popocatépetl—which means smoking mountain. He watches over his Itza, and he rains fire on Earth because of his rage over the loss of his beloved.”
“That’s sad.”
Caleb nods. “That’s one of many. But it’s interesting that these stories are found all over the world and in every culture. Most are tragic, I think, because most people experience such suffering and loss that we’re attracted to the tragic.”
“But what about your Izta? Will you know her when you see her?”
He sits quietly a moment. “I’ve seen her.”
“You have?” An instant jealousy hits me hard. A terrible ache grows angry and strong. I’m sure my face is flushed red and my eyes may emit fire soon . . . except the pain and sudden distance that separates us makes me want to burst into tears.
“Yes.” He stares at his worn hiking boots.
My head is pounding. “Where? When?”
“Recently, and a long time ago.”
“In Hawaii?”
He shakes his head, and a fearful hope attempts to come to life, but I’m afraid to allow hope’s existence.
“I’ll tell you about it sometime.”
“Was it a dream?”
His face looks thoughtful. “Sort of.”
“Please.”
He stands up and takes a step toward me. I stare up at him, and he reaches for my hands. “Are we ready for this?”
I sigh and nod. “Yes.”
Pulling me up, we stand inches apart, completely alone except for the silent pines towering around us and the churning sea below.
“I want to know.”
“Let me show you something first.”
From inside his backpack, Caleb pulls out a harness. I step into it and he snaps everything into place while I’m mostly conscious of his closeness. I want his hands to move from the harness to my body, and it’s surprising the aggravation I feel when he doesn’t.
“We could probably do without all this.”
And then I realize we’re back to the trust experiment. I look down the cliff and remember the rope and my heart starts pounding.
“I’m not the best about climbing and heights and all that.”
“Remember that for the evaluation. Subject is pushed beyond her comfort level. Will she have faith in her partner when it does not appear safe?”
“It’s not safe?”
He reaches out a hand, and I realize that he has no harness.
“Trust me,” he says.
“I do trust you. I might have lied earlier about the six.”
He laughs and says, “Come on, then.”
The experiment takes us down along the rock cliff. It’s not as difficult as it looks from the top. Step by step, we work our way down. I’m attached to the rope, Caleb is not. He goes first and helps me, showing me footholds and handholds as we take a staggered path between crevasses and outcroppings. We reach a rounded rock where I can’t see over the edge. Only gray water stretches before us, with more black jagged rocks everywhere below and around us, as if some giant dropped a massive pile of stone along the seashore.
“It’s slick right here, be careful. We’re going over this.”
“Over it? There’s nothing there.”
He smiles and disappears over the rounded ledge. I see his hand reach for me, and I grasp it tightly. Our hands are cold from the sea air, but sweat sends an icy shiver down my spine. A deep breath—this is foolish, I know—and then I slide around the rock, feet first and frantic to find something solid.
My feet immediately find a place to hold. His other hand takes my arm and I slide somewhat under the massive boulder we went over.
“You did it,” Caleb says, but I’m not sure what I did. He unhooks the harness and leaves it dangling off the rock. “Come on.”
We have to crawl under a ledge and then suddenly, we stand inside a tall sea cave.
“This is amazing,” I exclaim, taking it in. It looks like a half amphitheater open to the sky. The ocean waves wash up toward the bottom of the smoothed stone that reminds me of polished marble.
“At high tide, the cave gets flooded. We’re almost at low tide, so it’s safe for awhile.”
Vines and moss crawl up the sides of the cave. Several small crabs take off as we step farther in. It doesn’t go far back, maybe twenty feet, and is shaped like a half oval, with the top of the cave high above us. This place with the smell of the sea, the rhythm of the waves, the sound of sea gulls, it all creates this surreal existence around us as if we’re the only two people in this world of rock and sea.
“Does anyone else know about this place?” I see that he’s been watching me take this all in.
“Apparently. See.” He points to a portion of the rock wall farther back where several names are carved into the stone.
Keith + Sara Billy Poe was here.
Forever Jenny.
I imagine our names there, too, and he seems to read my thoughts.
“How did you find it?”
“I saw it once from a fishing boat. I could barely make it out with my binoculars, so I came exploring a few weeks ago. I haven’t told anyone else about it.
“So you trust me?” I smile as I say it, thinking perhaps this day was going both ways in our trust evaluation.
“You didn’t say whether you’ve ever been in love before.”
I shake my head. “Not really.”
“So that means you were a little in love before?”
“Well,” I pause and enjoy his frown. “I was in love with Johnny Depp for a long time.”
He laughs. “That’s competition. And with a pirate no less. Tough.”
I want to ask about his “great love” again, but I’m afraid of the answer. His expression makes a quick change to concern.
“Watch out!” he says, grabbing my arm and pulling me toward him.
He holds me against him and pushes my back against the rock, covering my head with one arm and holding me firmly against him with the other. I hear a momentary roar and water sprays around us with surprising force.
It happens in mere seconds, but in that time, the whole world seems to pause. Or gasp.
“I’m sorry, a sleeper wave. I should have watched better,” he whispers in my ear.
He doesn’t release me, but he looks down at me with our mouths inches apart. I taste salt on my tongue from the spray and long for him as I’ve never longed for anything before.
The roar of another approaching wave breaks the trance and Caleb suddenly grabs my hand.
“Hurry!” he shouts. “It’s a bigger one.”
We reach the top of the cliff, shivering and achy in our wet clothing.
“Seems one or both of us always ends up soaking wet when we’re together,” I say, remembering the night of the prom.
He nods. “I have some extra clothes. I should have told you to bring some. But that was a surprise. I have towels and a blanket. I need to get you home before you get chilled.”
Caleb acts distracted now. He’s careful not to touch me longer than is normal. So now I doubt that he might have kissed me in the cave, that I might be the love of his life. As we walk toward the jeep, I go over and over that moment. Have I made up every time I believe we connected? Caleb certainly isn’t giving any indication that our moment happened now. Perhaps he regrets it. Perhaps I’m a distraction from what he really wants in life? His grandfather will never agree to a relationship between us anyway—perhaps that stops him too?
The word perhaps feels like a loose sail to my ship. It flaps untethered and without direction . . . it offers too many possibilities.
I imagine asking, Did you feel that moment back there? On the cliff, in the cave, when we first danced at the prom . . . I thought you might kiss me. I almost kissed you. Do you feel anything for me?
He reaches out to help me around the last boulder before we’re back on the edge of the meadow.
“Careful,” he says as I wobble and he holds my forearm firmly to keep me from falling.
There is a pause and I am, as always, shaken by the electric energy pulsating between us. An incredulous look crosses his face. He stares at me as if I’ve just turned a different color.
“What is it?”
His usual composure and steady way has given in to an edge of vulnerability.
“Is something wrong?”
“No, sorry, it’s nothing.” He shakes his head. “We’d better take off. You are freezing cold.”
“What is wrong?”
“Nothing.” He seems to get himself back together. His smile returns, though with a frown in his thick eyebrows.
As he stares at me, his smile falters again and his eyebrows squeeze into one—that confused expression returns.
“There it is again. What’s going on? Tell me.” I smoothe my hair, worried at how terrible I must look right now.
He walks down the trail without saying a word.
Then I surprise myself by blurting, “I might be falling in love with you.”
He stops, but doesn’t turn.
I freeze, terrified that he actually heard me.
Suddenly, he turns around and walks back fast. My heart pounds. His jaw is set, and his eyes intense.
He takes my face with two hands. His eyes drink in every part, and then a slight pause, hesitation perhaps. For a moment, he turns away and then with the same intensity as when he closed the distance between us, he pulls me against him and kisses me. He kisses me firmly with his soft and hungry mouth. He tastes salty and sweet, and I fall deep into a blinding torrent of wonder.
He pulls away slightly, still holding my face with two hands, and my legs feel like they might not sustain my weight.
“What did you say?” he whispers.
“I might be falling in love with you,” I whisper, finding it hard to focus on his face.
“Kate,” he says, almost sadly.
“What? You might be falling in love with me too?” My voice is hopeful, pathetically hopeful.
He shakes his head.
“You aren’t falling in love with me?”
He doesn’t respond. I touch his face carefully with the tips of my fingers. His skin is incredibly soft above the line of hard jawbone. I touch his silky black hair. His eyes close and I want to kiss his eyes, but I’m afraid. Afraid of all of this. This could destroy me.
He opens his eyes. “Kate, I’m already in love with you.”